Gwyn Althea Bernardo May 7, 2015

2014-58376 English 10 THU5

The Need to Achieve

Learning used to be fun. It used to encourage students to engage more in school

activities such as lectures, discussions, assignments and the like. Students hardly see

schools as places where you can actually learn something new. Instead, it became a

venue where students loathe to be in and along with it is the joy of learning slowly being

taken out of the picture.

A few years back, I was a kid who just enjoys counting the things around me.

However, this habit slowly turned into something I did not like anymore when I found

myself sitting in a classroom being told to answer worksheets. The worksheets we usually

do in kindergarten were mostly about counting and whenever I commit some mistakes

and I see my low scores written using a red pen, I felt discouraged. Slowly, learning was

not my goal anymore it was already about getting high marks.

Last 1987, a study conducted by Wendy Grolnick and Richard Ryan from

University of Rochester showed that students who were informed that no grades will be

involved in the course have performed better than those who knew that the course will be

graded. The reason was students who were told that the course will be graded felt more

pressured therefore, performing poorly. Moreover, Anastasiya Lipnevich and Jeffrey

Smith (2008) expounded this by stating

One explanation for these findings comes from the feedback intervention theory

proposed by Kluger and DeNisi (1996). They suggested that optimal feedback
 should direct individuals attention toward the task and toward the specific

strategies that would lead to achievement of desired outcomes. Letter grades or

numeric scores, being evaluative in nature and carrying a notion of social

comparison, tend to turn students attention away from the task and toward the self,

thus leading to negative effects on performance (Kluger & DeNisi, 1996; Siero &

Van Oudenhoven, 1995; Szalma et al, in press). An alternative explanation from

the standpoint of the information processing theory suggests that the attention

diverted from the task to an individuals perceptions of self inevitably leads to

reallocation of cognitive resources. Contemplating ones success or failure may

subsequently impede effective performance due to competition for cognitive

resources (Kanfer & Ackerman, 1989) (p.34).

Alfie Kohns From Degrading to De-Grading briefly talked about the studies

conducted by educational psychologists during the 80s and the 90s have shown that

grading students have three effects. First, grades have led students to lose interest in

whatever they are learning. The grading system has molded the minds of students in

achieving awards instead of learning and exploring what they love. Grading and learning

have an inverse relationship. Grading has drained the life out of learning and being in

school. Students have been led to believe that getting high marks for school works matter

more than actually learning from school, getting high marks is the primary goal of entering

school. This situation can be very much likened to societys mindset about the courses

taken up in college. Choosing a degree that will eventually lead you to a high-paying job

is what matters rather than choosing what you are passionate about. Second, grades

developed the mentality of finding the easy way out. Students are more likely to choose
tasks that are familiar to them rather than taking a leap and experience something new.

They think that doing a more challenging thing will not do any good since trying it out

might lead to failure which in turn will become a poor grade. It is like an athlete

participating in a hurdling event without really going through the obstacle course. He or

she arrives at the finish line with no sweat at all. It is an easy success without even

experiencing failure. Lastly, grades contribute to the students having less initiative.

Students tend to be more curious about the lessons they discuss in class to come out

during the test than wonder about the correctness and validity they have. As a result,

students are becoming more like machines who just accepts commands from the

programmer and never really questions anything fed to them.

Kohn also stressed in the same article that there are more reasons to be against

the grading system. Grades are not accurate, dependable and unbiased. Giving a

student a relatively fine grade such as a C does not guarantee what aspects of a particular

subject she is good at or she needs help with. The grade is uninformative. More so,

grades actually encourage cheating. Kohn emphasized that researchers have found that

the more students are led to focus on getting good grades, the more likely they are to

cheat, even if they themselves regard cheating as wrong (Anderman et al., 1998; Milton

et al., 1986; also see Whos Cheating Whom?).

If the ultimate goal is to produce people who really think and who really learn from

school, then our grading system contradicts that goal. Take for example Finland. Based

on The Guardians How Finnish Schools Shine, Finlands curriculum is not that academic

as one would think it should be. In fact, students in this high-achieving country spend less

class hours per week. Practical learning opportunities and physical and outdoor activities
are a regular feature in the curriculum: helping to maintain a healthy body and mind. .

Finnish students are not mandated to take exams until the age of 19. The school work

given to students are not graded, scored or even compared. Instead, assessments are

descriptive and used in a developmental manner that aims to have feedback and

assessment for learning. With this type of curriculum, Finland still finished on top of PISA

2012, an assessment done to gauge the capabilities of 15-year-olds in mathematics,

reading, sciences and financial literacy. It ranked 12th in the surveys overall average while

the United Kingdom and the United States only finished on the 26 th and 36th respectively.

Furthermore, teachers are as prestigious as lawyers and medicine.

The mindset success matters more than learning could not be more demeaning

as it already is. Schools were built upon the ideology of educating people. Nevertheless,

what is happening right now is clearly the opposite. Schools produce more people driven

by the achievements rather than people who actually value learning.

Individual Difference Investigation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,

52(5), 890-898. Retrieved from

http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Wendy_Grolnick/publication/19575630_Auto

nomy_in_children%27s_learning_an_experimental_and_individual_difference_in

vestigation/links/00b7d51866d702860f000000.pdf

Kohn, A. (2011). The Case against Grades. Alfie Kohn. Retrieved from

http://www.alfiekohn.org/article/case-grades/

Kohn, A. (1999). From Degrading to De-Grading. Alfie Kohn. Retrieved from

http://www.alfiekohn.org/article/degrading-de-grading/

Lopez, A. (2012). How Finnish schools shine. The Guardian. Retrieved from

http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2012/apr/09/finish-

school-system

OECD (2014). What 15-year-olds know and what they can do with what they know. OECD

Publishing. Retrieved from http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/pisa-2012-

results-overview.pdf

Lipnevich, A. & Smith, J. (2008). Response to Assessment Feedback: The Effects of

Grades, Praise, and Source of Information. Educational Testing Service. Retrieved

from https://www.ets.org/Media/Research/pdf/RR-08-30.pdf